


no more false heavens

by emollience



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Brief body horror, Catra (She-Ra)-centric, Character Study, F/F, Pining, Post-Season/Series 03, Unrequited Love, speculation fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 00:40:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21262247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emollience/pseuds/emollience
Summary: Hordak’s sanctum — now Catra’s — beats silent and loud. She sits in power. She sits alone.Everything is perfect.





	no more false heavens

**Author's Note:**

> this'll definitely be Not Canon by the time s4 rolls around but who cares am i right lads!!

If I was bound for hell let it be hell. No more false heavens. No more damned magic. You hate me and I hate you. We'll see who hates best. 

\- THE WIDE SARGASSO SEA, Jean Rhys

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Catra takes Hordak’s throne. He doesn’t need it, anyways. He spends all his time holed up in the remains of his lab, tinkering with his armor now that Catra knows the chink, his weakness. The first few days are a little rough, what with the way he sulks and scowls at her, but really, she’s doing him a favor. They’re co-leaders, after all. 

The others take some time to adjust to calling her Lord Catra. Scorpia’s face twists and her eyes glisten, but she does it. The others hesitate. They adjust, soon enough. 

See, here’s the thing: Catra knows how to adapt. She always had to. It was the only way to survive Shadow Weaver’s bullshit, the only way to claw her way to the very top of the Horde’s crappy hierarchy. She’s the Horde Lord, now. She’s made it, kicking and screaming, after banishment and failure and a trip to another reality, and she’s here, above them all, stronger than them all. 

She no longer thinks about Adora. 

There’s no need to. Not anymore. She’s all but gone, disappeared into a bright light, a reality that was not their own, though it could’ve been, should’ve been. She’s never chosen Catra, not really. Not when it mattered. Not when Catra basically offered her heart on an altar labeled _ yours _. Not ever. 

Hordak’s sanctum — now Catra’s — beats silent and loud. She sits in power. She sits alone.

Everything is perfect. 

  
  
  
  


“Why did you do it?” Scorpia asks once. She lingers at the bottom of the steps to Catra’s throne, staring up at her with those wide, sad eyes of hers. 

Catra crosses her legs; leans back in her seat. “Do what?” 

“Open the portal,” she says. “You didn’t have to. You didn’t have to do any of it.” Here, she takes a step up, claws pressed to her chest. “I just — I don’t understand. We could’ve stayed in the Crimson Waste. We could’ve been happy —” 

A bitter laugh escapes Catra. “No, we couldn’t.” Her mouth twists in a smile. Scorpia flinches back, shoulders curving forward. “I opened the portal because I wanted to. I left the Crimson Waste because I wanted to. I’m the Horde Lord,” she says, propping her chin on her hand, “because I want to be.” 

Scorpia still looks up at her like she’s waiting for something else: a better explanation; an apology; anything but the reality Catra laid out before her. Catra thinks of a battered battlefield, of a princess falling to her knees, of a promise and hands gripping hands, of another lifetime. Her chest aches. 

“Leave,” she says. “Don’t question me again. You wouldn’t want to end up like Entrapta, would you?” 

  
  
  
  


“Horde Prime will be here soon,” Hordak tells her. He stands at the foot of the stairs, staring at what was once his throne. 

Catra smiles. “We’ll throw him a party.” 

Hordak scowls. “You promised me that together we’d conquer Etheria,” he says. “We are no closer to that than when you were nothing but an incompetent Force Captain. The Rebellion continues to hold us off.” 

“The Rebellion,” says Catra, “is splintering. Their Queen doesn’t know what she’s doing. She-Ra’s been spotted running around the planet by herself.” She inspects her nails, the way the light glints off their surface. “We’ve conquered over half the land in the short time I’ve ruled than you have in the past, what? Twenty something years?” She looks at Hordak. “I doubt your daddy issues are going to pop up in the next ten minutes, but if you’re so scared why don’t you go out and do some conquering yourself, old man?” 

“I created this empire from the ground up, you insolent, ungrateful —”

“I’ve done more than you ever have,” she says. “You sent me off to die and I came back with the answer to what you’ve wanted my entire life. Don’t snap at me just because you’re still pining after some princess.”

He flinches back as if slapped. “I’m not pining.” 

She laughs. “Then build a new lab. Stop trying to fix that little gem _ she _ made for you. What good does wanting her back do? Don’t you get it? It makes you weak.”

Hordak shakes his head. “I’m not,” and he pauses. He stares at her as if seeing her for the first time. “I remember your files. Shadow Weaver was always much harsher on yours than even the most inept cadet, regardless of your scores. Even without spelling it out, I knew why.” 

Catra scrapes her nails against the surface of the throne. 

“You claim I’m weak for your same exact flaw,” he says, and it’s the black abscess shared between them, the never healing wound Catra cradles close, the one she won’t breathe life into even as it festers and grows. 

Catra stands. Hordak steps back. She makes her way down the steps until she’s towering only a few above him, her face blank. 

“Don’t pretend we’re the same,” she tells him. 

He smiles, eyes and mouth glinting red. “I don’t have to.” 

  
  
  
  


See, here’s the thing: Catra has loved Adora so thoroughly you could cut her open and see Adora’s name etched into every inch of herself, right down to her sinew, her marrow. Before a fall in the woods, a sword and a destiny, and her own sharpened claws, she had never known anything else; had never learned what it was to wake up and live in a world where she does not love and is not loved by Adora. It used to be unfathomable to her. 

She awoke in what should’ve been her Force Captain quarters but inexplicably knew was Adora’s with no doubt in her mind that the world was right. Adora, fast asleep and curled up on her side, was right. The leaking bulkheads, the hard mattress — it was all so viscerally right she practically leapt onto Adora with glee. Adora screaming and pushing her back: wrong, but Catra fixed that quick with a laugh and a kiss. 

When Catra remembers that reality now she dissects it. Slices open every reaction Adora threw her way until she gets to the very core. Analyzes just how to best use the way Adora once cradled Catra’s face and kissed her quiet, kissed her pliant and begging against her. Adora loves Catra. Regardless of the way her eyes narrowed as she turned to face Catra with the broken portal as a backdrop, Catra knows it. Adora will always love Catra. 

  
  
  
  


Her body is not her own. It twists and moves and does what she wants, but in the dark of the night it flashes bitter black, luminescent white splintering her limbs. She wakes and watches her arm glitch; watches the way the world flashes white and purple, fracture lines everywhere and nowhere, crawling up her body, until even her face becomes nothing. 

Real, not real. Shadow Weaver’s hand gentle as it wiped food from her face. Adora’s voice pleading for Catra to come with her. A world collapsing in on itself as Adora reached for her. A Force Captain badge falling into the chasm between them. 

She finds herself touching her arm, running her fingers over the smooth fabric of the sleeve covering her skin. She stares into mirrors, into the solid blue of her right eye and tells herself, _ I’m here. This is my body. I’m here, I’m here. I’m me, _ but she does not look like herself. She looks like nobody. 

  
  
  
  


“I love you,” Scorpia admits, or rather pleads. She doesn’t touch Catra. She keeps her claws to herself, as if Catra’s a skittish animal ready to bolt at the first hint of movement.

Catra can’t bear to look at her. She drags a claw over the broken bits of tech in what used to be Entrapta’s lab. She wipes away the dust. Her heart beats slow and steady in her throat, her ears. 

“Catra, I know you’re a good person,” continues Scorpia. “I want us to be happy. We can leave. We don’t have to stay here.” 

Catra shakes her head. “Everyone always wants to leave,” she says. “Everyone is always leaving.” 

“I won’t leave without you.”

“You will.” 

“No.” Scorpia steps forward. She reaches for Catra and Catra flinches back. “I love you, Catra. I know this isn’t you. Please.” 

She’s tired. She’s so tired. Her bones ache. She wonders when the exhaustion settled so deep and realizes it has always been with her. 

“I don’t want to go with you,” she says. “I don’t want you.” 

Scorpia’s face is solemn. Her eyes fix on Catra. “Because you want her.” 

Catra stares back with as much defiance as she can. She spent so long wishing for Adora to turn back, to hold a hand out and say, I love you. I miss you. I was wrong to leave. She doesn’t know when she stopped hoping. 

Something tight and familiar builds in her chest. She doesn’t have a name for it, though she can pinpoint the moment it gained momentum. 

“No,” she answers. “Because I want to stay.” 


End file.
